Increasingly, electronic mail (email) based service departments are replacing telephone-based service departments. Often, a customer or other end user who encounters difficulties when trying to solve a problem sends an email message to an email message-based service department. An agent within the service department often replies to the message from the customer or end user with a response based on the information the customer or end user provides in the email message. The agent may use a standard response from a database in his or her reply. For example, a refrigerator customer might send an email message to a refrigerator service provider to inquire about a poorly functioning auto-defrost feature. An agent within the service department may respond with a standard response from a database that discusses auto-defrost problems.
In large companies, a service department may receive hundreds or thousands of email messages each day from customers or end users requesting assistance. Many times, these email messages are initially received by an email response management system (ERMS). An ERMS may analyze the email message to determine its content, search a database for a possible response based on the content of the email message, and route the email message to a service agent that is likely able to respond to the email message.
Some ERMS systems have the capability to “auto-respond.” In an auto-response system, the ERMS may create a response and send it to the customer without intervention from a human agent. The capability to send auto-responses to customers can generate significant cost savings for a service department by reducing the number of service agents needed at any given time. However, because auto-responses are prone to error, there is often a tradeoff between the low cost of auto-responses and customer satisfaction. Customers may not have patience for inaccurate or irrelevant auto-responses. Poor responses waste a customer's time, cause frustration and damage the customer relationship. The harm caused by damaging the customer relationship may outweigh any cost savings.
Some ERMS systems create auto-responses and then send them to human service agents for review, to improve the overall response quality. Other systems can be configured to send auto-responses directly to the customer only when the content of the customer email message falls in a very limited subject area. These auto-responses are usually only sent when the likelihood of inaccurate responses is low or when the likelihood that the customer relationship will be adversely impacted by an inaccurate response is low. Current ERMS systems may not efficiently balance the low cost of auto-responses with customer satisfaction.